Cause Of Death
by Ursula J. Tempest
Summary: Will House learn to love before Chase fulfils his vengeance upon him? A story of love, lust, betrayal, jealousy and new life. Humorous but contains tasteful adult content from the outset.


Chase opened the door and walked into the room with his customary strut. He stopped. He stared. His eyes widened involuntarily.

The room, small and featureless except for the piles of equipment and one small, barred window, was host to an excess of impassioned noises and tangled anatomy.

"I haven't had sex in a room this small since my college-dorm days," grunted a familiar voice, while strong, pale surgeon's hands moved over a lean, white back.

"You haven't _had_ sex since your college dorm days," was the playful reply.

"And there I was thinking that I wasn't doing too bad."

Chase hadn't needed to hear those sugary female tones to know who was on the receiving end of House's love- he knew every inch of that lithe body from the numerous times they had spent alone together. It was Cameron.

Suddenly, House's blue orb-like eyes darted upwards, beneath a sweaty, furrowed brow, locking with Chase's own eyes. House looked surprised, dishevelled. House's lips were slightly parted, as if he were about to speak to Chase. Chase felt almost violated; almost included in this sticky, bitter act of… there was no other word for it- betrayal.

He noticed with a doctor's instinctive keenness that House's eyes were quite fully dilated, though even as he watched they began to return to normal size as the older man regained a grip on himself. And his loins.

"House? House, what's wrong?" said an anxious female voice, not realising that her long time lover had just entered the room.

Chase began to back out, replacing his hand on the cold mettle of the door handle. The door clicked quietly shut.

House and Cameron were left, once again, to their hot embrace.

"Nothing," House said gently into Cameron's ear, rocking her gently back and forth against his body, still inside her. "Nothing."

Chase couldn't remove from his memory the image of her, her smooth, rough-cut, shiny brown hair, her fringe tickling the tops of her eyes, strands sticking lightly to her forehead. He couldn't banish the picture of her long curved back, her bone structure, even whilst doing the rounds at the clinic. This affected his work more than he realised, wrapped as he was in his own dark cloud; he gave insensitive and quick-fire, if largely accurate, diagnoses to patients and repeatedly slapped his prescription pad down with more noise than was necessary. The nurses working around the emergency room and the clinic looked at the handsome young doctor's angry face and then at each other, raising their eyebrows and muttering to one another as he passed them in the corridors. Dashing Doctor Chase had been the subject of more than one idle crush among the staff in his time, though he did not know it, and he was now oblivious to the negative attention he was drawing.

He should have expected it, Chase thought glumly. He knew her; he knew Cameron's feelings like the back of his hand. He watched her so much of the time, just observing her quietly. She never noticed, never knew. And so much of the time he would scowl inwardly as she shot admiring looks at House and picked details of House's private life up in conversation with him. She wanted House's approval, he knew that much, and she would try almost anything to attract his attention. It shocked him that Cameron, his sweet, calm, serious, caring Cameron, even she had dark ambitions, though he was sure that even she was not quite aware of them.

House- House was another matter. House was a great doctor, yes, and it was a privilege to be working under his guidance, as he was told again and again. But House was also a lecherous, morally-bankrupt, aging vampire, sleeping with Cameron, a woman half his age, without feeling in the slightest bit worried or concerned about it and completely lacking any love or affection for her. House treated Cameron like a call girl, barely acknowledging her in other circumstances. House was most definitely the centre of his own selfish, drug-dependant universe. He knew that he couldn't provide any prospects for Cameron, no security- not even the security of private place to make love- yet he toyed with her, leading her to think that they could have a proper relationship. Perhaps he thought he was infallible. He certainly acted as though he owned the hospital. It made Chase's blood boil, just to think of him running his fingers down her body. Now he had seen it too.

He wanted to kill House. He wanted to reduce his feelings towards House into a barbaric, Neanderthal display of power. He was younger, he was fitter and he could tear House to pieces. He might not be as intelligent as House, as House seemed to delight in reminding him, often in front of Cameron and Foreman, but he graduated top of his class in med-school and he was cunning where it counted. He wouldn't have been assigned to work under House otherwise, the vampire's time was considered too valuable to be wasted.

Of course, while tearing House apart might effectively qualm his primitive urges and kill his rival in the process, it was an unfortunate consequence that this would undoubtedly lead to his own incarceration. No, he needed to be subtle, to be quiet and deadly, he mused, sweeping blond locks back off his face.

He was in a hospital, a place filled with medicines and drugs and dangerous equipment- so easy to give an elderly patient a few too few slugs of a medicine, to keep it back, or to write an unnecessary prescription for a clinic patient, picking it up later, when they'd gone. It was unlikely that any one would miss the meds, and even after House's sad demise no one would ever lay the blame with him, would they: Doctor Chase, House's faithful sidekick. It was just a matter of picking the right time now, waiting for the most opportune moment to reel into action.

Preparation- that was the key. If only Chase could procure the meds long before hand, surely the records would only be back-checked so far, that was assuming that House's post mortem threw up any incriminating results- just the right meds, the right time, and preparation. That was all Chase needed and no-one need ever know. Especially not sweet Cameron. Not yet, anyway. He would position himself near her, he decided, as she grieved for House, and he could lend her a comforting shoulder to cry on, help her pick up the pieces.

He would wait as long is took, until she loved him back.

Chase mused his choice of lethal meds as he completed his rounds of clinic duty. Patients could not fail to notice the absent look on their doctor's face as he attended to them.

House was in his glass-walled office, with his team: Doctors Foreman, Chase and Cameron- all of them bright young sparks, all with huge potential in the field, and all of them hanging off of House's every word. Cuddy watched the noiseless scene from behind the glass partition wall. House swivelled in his chair and pointed his cane at Foreman, miming directions to him with his usual dead pan manner and an ironic quirk to his mouth. Immediately, Foreman stood up, strode squarely to the door and pushed it open with one hand. The open door elicited a wave of noisy debate from inside House's room before it swung shut again. Foreman looked curiously up at Cuddy from beneath lowered lids as he passed and nodded to her.

"Doctor Cuddy," he said in curt acknowledgement of his senior.

"Foreman," Cuddy replied levelly back at him as he passed.

She watched him round the corner and then turned back to the silent tableau in front of her. Cameron gazed adoringly up at House with huge puppy eyes, barely concealed by the scowl on her forehead and the pout of her lips and her other attempts at maintaining a serious countenance. House seemed quite accepting of this behaviour, despite his usual loathing for humanity, indeed, for anything even vaguely saccharine. This surprised Cuddy, awakening in the pit of her stomach a small, wobbly twinge that she couldn't quite identify. She placed a protective hand on her swollen stomach.

She looked to the other figure in the room, Chase, and was taken-aback by the look on his face. Unwatched by the other two who were engaged in enthusiastic dialogue, he had taken up a distinctly hostile stance; his shoulders were pulled upward and backward as his body weight rested on his lower arms, his head and neck pressing forwards, ever so slightly. His face was down-turned and yet he watched House intently from below his prominent, tanned brow with a dark, dark look. This one would have to be watched, Cuddy decided instantly, in the proprietorial manner that had become second nature to her in her years of running the hospital. She did not know what had happened between Chase and House, but whatever it was, it needed resolving. Teams didn't last long when such dislike was apparent within it- generally one doctor or the other would resign, in most cases the least senior. She didn't want to loose a good young doctor.

Cuddy astutely put those thoughts to one side of her mind as she prepared to enter- moments like that were luxuries that she couldn't afford to indulge in often, though it paid to be perceptive where staff where concerned- she had news for house, not good news either. She wondered how he would take it. If was one man that she could neither predict nor read, it was House.

Cuddy place one manicured hand on the door's smooth surface and pushed it open, to be greeted by the sound of House's pebbly, smooth voice.

"Ah, to what do I owe this honour, Doctor Cuddy," he said, face tilted upward with a mercurial quirk of his eyebrows.

Cuddy nervously opened her mouth and then closed it again. All eyes were on her.

"I need a private word with you House," she said and gestured outside. "It's about the heart patient's new beta-blockers, they're causing hyperventilation. I'm not sure how long he'll last."

"So, put him on a different cocktail, have one of the heart specialists see to him. I'm busy." House looked briskly away again and started to scribble frantically on his whiteboard.

"No, House, it has to be you," Cuddy said with authority. "Now." She could see, from the corner of her eye, Cameron glaring at her, but she ignored it stoically, keeping her gaze firmly on House and willing him to follow her. She knew how stubborn he could be.

She breathed a sigh of relief as House got stiffly to his feet and followed her limpingly down the corridor. Cuddy took the first right, into the quieter orthopaedics corridor.

"Tell me if I'm mistaken, but this is a very round-about route to the cardiac wards, Cuddy," he didn't pause for her to reply. "This suggests to me that you don't really want my medical expertise. What you really want is _me_."

Cuddy stopped and turned to confront him. House followed suit and turned towards her, cocking his head back slightly. Cuddy's huge liquid, brown eyes never failed to astound House. She was looking up at him wide-eyed now, in a manner that beguiled him.

"You're right, House. It is you I want." House put his head thoughtfully to the side before pulling a sceptical, humorous face at her.

"When did this change of heart come about?" he asked sarcastically. "Oh, alright then, we'll forget the pleasantries and just get down to it shall we?"

"No, House, that's not what I meant. I meant I needed to speak to you. It's about," she faltered "it's about when we were together at Christmas. It's…" Cuddy looked down at her hand, words failing her. This wasn't supposed to happen when you were an affluent, professional, mature woman.

House was wearing an intent expression. It wasn't an expression of expectation, instead it was somehow questioning. It was the look he wore when having medical epiphanies and finding the answers to unsolvable cases. He stepped back and did a double-take of her, looking her up and down, before craning in, an incredulous expression on his face.

Cuddy knew he had worked it out.

"You _are_ pregnant." House said, his voicing rising in pitch as the shock hit him. "And you wouldn't be telling me unless it was… mine"

Cuddy said nothing just looked at him in an apologetic way.

"Whoa," House turned to the wall, leaning against it with this arm above his head. His cane dangled from his other hand.

"I… I just thought you needed to know"

* * *

Please R&R, it's nice to know your thoughts- tell me what I got right, what I got wrong and anything that I could improve. I already have a loose plan for the story, but if there's anything you do or don't want to see, let me know, or if there's anything you want me to focus in on (like one of the characters for example). Thanks for reading! 


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